Plagiarism of computer code Spring 2012 Student Hackathon Coding 2012)

Purpose of case study Target audience: Subject coordinators, academic integrity decision makers Key issue: Issues surrounding the ‘re-use’ of unacknowledged sources of computer code Purpose: To illustrate some of the contexts of plagiarism beyond the copying of text Materials: Full case scenario; University policy; Readings Academic Integrity Standards Project

Our research Interviews with 28 senior academic integrity stakeholders at 6 Australian universities No. 1 recommendation for good practice:  Provide appropriate and on-going professional development for all staff in relation to academic integrity policy and process. Academic Integrity Standards Project

Case Study: Jonathan Jonathan is the subject coordinator in an undergraduate subject on applied programming. The assessment tasks in this subject require students to design, implement, test and debug simple programs using a specific programming language. The assignments require students to submit program source code. Academic Integrity Standards Project

Case Study: Plagiarism of computer code One of Jonathon’s colleagues, Amy, asks if she can trial the program she has developed to test for shared code on some of the assignments submitted by Jonathan’s students Trial reveals over 15% of students have submitted assignments identified as having ‘shared code’ Jonathan decides that this means students have copied Academic Integrity Standards Project

Questions for discussion 1. What does your university policy say about designing the assessment of student learning to support student learning? 2. What does your university policy say about the copying and translation of computer code? 3. What does your university policy say about the copying and translation of computer code from one computer language into another (also called ‘porting’ or ‘inter-lingual plagiarism’)? Academic Integrity Standards Project

Questions for discussion 5. What other information would Jonathan need in order to make sound interpretations of the meaning of Amy’s findings? 6. What other strategies could Jonathan implement to reduce the incentive to, and risk of, students copying code? 7. It is acceptable for Jonathan to investigate the matters further given that students did not receive any notice that their assignments would be analyses using Amy’s program? 8. What information should Jonathan obtain about the quality of Amy’s program before using it to analyse student assignments? Academic Integrity Standards Project

References Joyce, D ‘Academic Integrity and Plagiarism: Australasian perspectives’, Computer Science Education, vol. 17, no. 3, pp Mann, S., & Frew, Z 2006, ‘Similarity and originality in code: Plagiarism and normal variation in student assignments’, in D Tolhurst & S Mann (Eds.), Proceedings of the Eighth Australasian Computing Education Conference (pp ), Darlinghurst, Australia: Australian Computer Soc 2012, Spring 2012 Student Hackathon Coding, digital image, accessed on 29 August 2012, This image is used with permission under an Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Creative Commons License. Academic Integrity Standards Project

References and resources Arwin, C, & Tahaghoghi, SMM 2006, ‘Plagiarism detection across programming languages’, Proceedings of the 29th Australasian Computer Science Conference, vol. 48, pp , Australian Computer Society. Bretag, T., Mahmud, S., East, J., Green, M., James, C., McGowan, U., Partridge, L., Walker, R. & Wallace, M. (2011). Academic Integrity Standards: A Preliminary Analysis of the Academic Integrity Policies at Australian Universities, Australian Universities Quality Forum, 29 June-1 July, Melbourne, Australia. Bretag, T., Mahmud, S., Wallace, M., Walker, R., McGowan, U., East, J., Green, M., Partridge, L., & James, C. (2012, under review). ‘Teach us how to do it properly!’ An Australian academic integrity student survey, paper submitted for review to Studies in Higher Education, 5 April Collberg, C & Kobourov, S 2005, ‘Self-plagiarism in computer science’, Communications of the ACM, vol. 48, no. 4, pp Devlin, M 2002, ‘Plagiarism detection software: How effective is it?’, Excerpt from R James, C McInnis and M Devlin, Assessing Learning in Australian Universities - Ideas, strategies and resources for quality in student assessment, Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Melbourne. Academic Integrity Standards Project

For further resources from the Academic Integrity Standards Project, please go to: Support for this project/activity has been provided by the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching. The views in this project do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License.Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia License Academic Integrity Standards Project